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CAFTA and Dietary Supplements

Ron Paul Revolution

The Codex Alimentarius Commission, organized by the United Nations in the 1960s, is charged with “harmonizing” food and supplement rules among all nations of the world. As a result of Codex rules, those vitamins and minerals that would compete with medicines would require a doctor’s prescription. The European Union has already adopted Codex-type regulations that will be in effect across Europe later this year (2005). This raises concerns that Europeans will challenge our relatively open market for health supplements in a WTO forum. This is hardly far-fetched, as Congress has already changed our tax laws to comply with a WTO order.

Make no mistake about it: those international standards are moving steadily toward the Codex regime and its draconian restrictions on health freedom. Pharmaceutical companies have spent billions of dollars trying to get Washington to regulate your dietary supplements. So far, that effort has failed, in part because of a 1994 law called the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Big Pharma and the medical establishment hate this Act, because it allows consumers some measure of freedom to buy the supplements they want.

The largely government-run “healthcare” establishment, including the nominally private pharmaceutical companies, want government to control the dietary-supplement industry so that only they can manufacture and distribute supplements providing any real benefit. If this takes place, as it has in Europe, the high-potency, beneficial supplements that you can now buy over the counter will be available, if at all, only by prescription and at a much higher cost. This alone is sufficient reason for Congress to oppose the unconstitutional, freedom-destroying CAFTA bill.

FDA and Congress are also working (FDA quite openly, Congress more covertly) toward the goal of harmonizing our health laws with Codex Alimentarius standards and guidelines.